WASHINGTON (CNN)  Fox News is under fire for a newspaper ad they purchased Friday that inaccurately accused its competitors, including CNN, of failing to cover last weekend's Tea Party protests in Washington.

CNN provided live coverage of the rally in Washington on Saturday, dispatching more than a dozen personnel, including multiple camera crews and the CNN Express Bus, to cover the event. Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser was live at Freedom Plaza; Correspondent Kate Bolduan reported live from the Capitol and throughout the crowd; All Platform Journalist Jim Spellman provided live hits all day after traveling for weeks on the Tea Party Express Bus; and CNN Correspondent Lisa Desjardins was live for CNN and CNN Radio from the National Mall.

CNN's Rick Sanchez weighs in on Fox's ad

CNN's coverage also included numerous live reports and interviews with protesters and newsmakers, including rally day speaker Sen. Jim DeMint and activist Art Gerhart, who was on the set with anchor Don Lemon to discuss the event.

In addition, CNN.com provided a live stream of the rally throughout the day.

ABC referred Friday to a statement by Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks  the group that organized the event  characterizing the network's coverage that day as "fair and honest." The rally story was featured on the network's morning shows, nightly news broadcast, in extensive radio reporting and online.

MSNBC also pointed to its own reporting. "Just like every other network mentioned in the ad, MSNBC covered last Saturday's protest," the network said in a statement.

CBS detailed its coverage of the event in a statement issued Friday afternoon.

"CBS News had multiple crews on site with our Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes reporting," the network said in a statement. "It was the lead story on the CBS EVENING NEWS; CBS Radio News provided hourly reports during the day and CBSNews.com had the story in its rotating lead all day. They also processed the Nancy Cordes video and linked it throughout the site."

And CNN criticized Fox for its inaccurate statement. "Fox News' ad released today is blatantly false regarding CNN's coverage of the 9/12 rally," CNN said in a statement.

Watch some of CNN's Tea Party coverage here, and read some of our in-depth reporting.

The Washington Post ran a full-page instigating ad in today&#8217;s paper from Fox News that asks: &#8220;How Did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC And CNN Miss This Story?&#8221; referring to the D.C. tea party protests on 9/12.

CNN&#8217;s Rick Sanchez said &#8220;you lie!&#8221; (seriously, he said that) &#8211; since his network and all the others did cover the protests. He also played a clip of Bill O&#8217;Reilly saying CNN covered the protests. But Fox News is sticking to their guns, and WashPost is defending the ad buy. What? (Updated, with comment from FOX)
Every network defended their coverage today, and TVNewser has a rundown of those defenses, plus this from Michael Tammero, VP of Marketing for FNC.

&#8220;Generally speaking, it&#8217;s fair to say that from the tea party movement &#8230; to Acorn &#8230; to the march on 9/12, the networks either ignored the story, marginalized it or misrepresented the significance of it altogether.&#8221;

Oh okay. So in Fox News&#8217; opinion their competition didn&#8217;t cover the protests (or ACORN or the movement as a whole) in a way that they approved of. It is the opinion of Fox News (not fact, mind you) that the networks &#8220;missed&#8221; the story. This clears it up, and the ad makes sense. It&#8217;s not &#8220;fair and balanced&#8221; by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it makes more sense.

It&#8217;s also pretty much why the Post is totally fine with their decision. A spokesperson tells Politico, &#8220;The Post will not reject an advertisement based on its content or sponsor, unless the ad is illegal, false, advocates illegal actions, or is not in keeping with standards of taste. When we do not see anything in a particular ad that is contrary to these standards, we will not place limits on speech or content.&#8221;

Here&#8217;s the bottom line: Fox News didn&#8217;t &#8220;miss&#8221; this story because they were the story. They&#8217;ve driven the story, promoted the protests and covered them because they are the protests. The Fox Nation, the FOX opinion/community arm of the network&#8217;s web properties drove this story by actively helping register people to attend tea parties around the country. Glenn Beck promoted the D.C. protest (&#8220;It&#8217;s Time To Stand Up&#8221; he implored his audience) because he started the entire 9/12 movement.

Just look at the way Foxnews.com&#8217;s supposed &#8220;news&#8221; story covered the protests in D.C. From their &#8220;news&#8221; report:

They came. They saw. They protested.

Yet it remains to be seen whether the demonstration Saturday in the nation&#8217;s capital, against what protesters view as out-of-control spending by an expanding federal government, will conquer Washington.

It&#8217;s no surprise the other networks are actively trying to discredit this ad. But CNN sensed a chance to pounce, and they have been most active in refuting the point. Today they sent a statement that included dozens of embeddable links of their coverage, images and more.

> Update Saturday at 2pmET: We got ahold of someone at FOX today for a reaction to the reactions. An FNC exec laughed it off, saying, &#8220;&#8216;Thank you very much,&#8217; and a special thanks to Rick Sanchez who has always been a sucker&#8230;he&#8217;s a gift that keeps on giving.&#8221; (See this from July.)

CNN provided live coverage of the rally in Washington throughout the day Saturday, Sept. 12. CNN dispatched more than a dozen personnel and multiple camera crews, including the CNN Express, to cover the event. CNN&#8217;s deputy political director Paul Steinhauser was live at Freedom Plaza, CNN correspondent Kate Bolduan live from the West Front of the Capitol and roved the crowd, CNN&#8217;s Jim Spellman provided live hits all day after traveling for weeks on the actual Tea Party Express, and CNN&#8217;s Lisa Desjardins was live from the National Mall.

You get the idea.

Now that brings us to Sanchez. He unleashed on Fox News during his 3pmET hour. But most ironic &#8211; he played a clip of O&#8217;Reilly, actually saying CNN covered the protests. Check out his rant:

Carter's words were a disaster. The sad part is, he was not the only moron to make such ludicrous statement. Maxine Waters and some other idiot in Congress said similar things. So no, I do not defned Carter's statements and actually wish he would just STFU.

Such a stupid thing to get worked up over. Really really stupid thing.

My station constantly says things like "song so&so, you heard it here first!". We don't know if we were the first. We don't care. What matters is giving the impression in the listeners head that we're on the cutting edge of playing the hot new tunes. Do our competitors cry and whine about how they play the song as well? No, they use the same damn tactics. It's called marketing. Use it or get left in the dust.

Same thing here. It's meant to give an impression in the potential viewers minds. The other stations whining about it is a reaction. And since they were not pro-active and instead reactive, they lose. Fox has them dancing to their tune.

Oh, and the ad is obviously targeted at conservatives. Fox knows it audience and caters to them. This can be seen as bias in some instances. The people that say that Fox doesn't do this don't know what they are talking about.

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